The Rules of Enragement

Story Sent in by Benjamin:

On a walk during my first date with Alise, she told me that she wanted to be married before she was out of college (we were both in college at the time, but not at the same place).

After hearing that, I asked her, since, as a senior, she had less than two semesters to go, how she expected to find someone and marry them so fast. I said, "Even if you meet someone special today, you think that you'd be married by graduation? Is that enough time to learn about someone?"

She retorted, "We'd have the rest of our lives to learn about each other."

"So by that logic, you'd say yes to anyone who asked, leaving the learning-more-about-them part to later?"

"Pretty much. I mean, they'd need to be clean and—"

I wanted to test her resolve, so I bent the knee and took her hand, there and then. "Alise, will you marry me?"

She gasped, and I knew I had made an awful mistake. She didn't brush it off, she didn't tell me she was joking all along. She took it seriously. She slapped her cheeks with both hands (to see if she was dreaming?) and bawled, right there, on the street.

"Yes!" she said, gripping my hand as if squeezing an orange to pulp, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh, God! Oh, my beautiful, beautiful boy, yes!"

I originally took her as sappy-romance-crazed, but I dropped it down to just, "crazed." I felt awful, and I had to break the engagement.

I stood up and she gave me a colossal hug. I raised my voice over her cries. "Alise, I was only joking. I wanted to see if you were serious, is all. I'm sorry."

Another gasp, this one far less happy. She made a horrified face and asked, "You... you didn't mean it? You're breaking our engagement?"

"I don't think we were actually engaged. This is only our first date."

She slapped me and stormed away. I thought about calling out something rude to her, but opted not to.

Personally, I don't count it as having been engaged, but I've always wondered if she mentions the situation to people as an actual, brief engagement.